Rudolf Nureyev defects to the West in 1961 - Rudolf Nureyev Foundation "I want to stay and to be free." Rudolf Nureyev at Le Bourget Airport Le Jeune -homme et la Mort by Roland Petit with Zizi Jeanmaire When the company went to Paris in 1961 for its first foreign tour, Rudolf could hardly be left behind but a close watch was kept on him. Still he did not conform. Instead of returning obediently to the hotel each night in the coaches provided, he went out with French dancers and other locals. One or two other Kirov dancers did likewise but Nureyev was the one who caused most alarm to the political agents running the tour. When everyone arrived at the airport to move on for performances in London he was instead given a ticket to Moscow and told he was needed for a gala. Disbelieving assurances that he would rejoin the company in London, he was sure he would never again be allowed out of Russia and would face relegation back home. He decided to seek asylum in the west and managed to get word to friends who had come to see him off.

They told the French police, who explained that Nureyev must personally approach them; he did this and was granted permission to stay in France. Russian officials thereafter did all they could to disparage the "defector", and in absence he was sentenced to prison. For many years all his travelling had to be done on temporary documents but eventually he was given Austrian citizenship. Having had the most spectacular personal success of the Kirov's Paris season, he was immediately offered an engagement with the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas, but stayed only a few months, violently disliking their production of The Sleeping Beauty. He did however admire their ballerina Rosella Hightower, and worked with her on his first ballet production, the Nutcracker pas de deux. He next met (offstage) another ballerina, the American Maria Tallchief, and introduced himself. Rudolf meets Erik Bruhn. Maria Tallchief was about to dance in Copenhagen with Erik Bruhn, whom Nureyev, on the strength of an amateur film, admired more than any other male dancer. Thus the two men met and fell in love, maintaining their close feelings, despite quarrels and separations, until Bruhn's death.

Both of them perfectionists, they did their daily class together and Nureyev began assimilating western style to add to what he had learned in Russia. Bruhn's attitude to his roles confirmed the belief Nureyev had already developed that a man should be allowed to dance as expressively as a woman; the effect of this was exemplified when they each added a soft, andante solo to their later productions of Swan Lake, introducing a new gentle style of male dancing later taken up by other choreographers, even as illustrious as Frederick Ashton. Russian ballet star Nureyev defects - Jun 16, 1961 - HISTORY.com Russian ballet star Nureyev defects Share this: Russian ballet star Nureyev defects Author Russian ballet star Nureyev defects URL Publisher A+E Networks Rudolf Nureyev, the young star of the Soviet Union’s Kirov Opera Ballet Company, defects during a stopover in Paris. The high-profile defection was a blow to Soviet prestige and generated international interest.

Nureyev became a star of Russian ballet in 1958 when, at barely 20 years old, he was made one of the Kirov Opera Ballet’s featured soloists. The Kirov and the Bolshoi ballet companies were two of the jewels of Soviet cultural diplomacy, and their performances earned worldwide accolades and respect for the arts in the USSR. In June 1961, the Kirov Company finished a run in Paris. On June 16, just as the company was preparing to board a flight home, Nureyev broke from the group and insisted that he was staying in France. According to eyewitnesses, other members of the troupe pleaded with Nureyev to rejoin them and return to the Soviet Union. The dancer refused and threw himself into the arms of airport security people, screaming, “Protect me!” The security officials took Nureyev into custody, whereupon he asked for political asylum. The Kirov Company fretted over the loss of its star and Soviet security guards fumed over Nureyev’s defection. Eventually, the troupe flew back to Russia without the dancer.

Nureyev’s high-profile defection was a double blow to the Soviet Union. First, it detracted from the quality of the Kirov Company, which had featured the young prodigy prominently in its performances throughout the world. Second, it severely damaged Soviet propaganda that touted the political and artistic freedom in Russia. Nureyev continued with his career after his defection. During the next 30 years he danced with England’s Royal Ballet and the American Ballet Theatre. He was in great demand as both a dancer and choreographer, and even made a few films (including a disastrous turn as the silent film star Rudolf Valentino). In 1983, he took over as ballet director of the Paris Opera. In 1989, he briefly returned to the Soviet Union to perform. He died in Paris in 1993.

Related Videos New Light On Nureyev's Grand Leap To the West - The New York Times The New York Times Books |New Light On Nureyev's Grand Leap To the West Search Continue reading the main story When Rudolf Nureyev defected to the West on June 16, 1961, at the height of the cold war, the event was seen as a leap to freedom, a triumph for democracy. Nureyev was a transformative figure, the greatest male ballet dancer of his time. He was sinuous, hollow-cheeked, with Tartar eyes and a Dionysian sexual presence. He was one of the first major cultural figures to defect from the Soviet Union. His singular act of defiance set the stage for the ensuing defections of Natalia Makarova in 1970 and Mikhail Baryshnikov in 1974. Some considered Nureyev's defection a premeditated act by a man disenchanted with the Soviet system and captivated by the allure of the West, its freedom and artistic promise.

But a new book, ''Nureyev: His Life,'' to be published today by William Morrow & Company, asserts that Nureyev's escape resulted from miscalculations and squabbling among officials of the Soviet Embassy, the Kirov Ballet's artistic leadership and the K.G.B. The new Nureyev book was written by Diane Solway, a journalist who had access to recently declassified Soviet archives. Other biographers have said that Nureyev had not originally intended to defect, and last month the Russian Government ''rehabilitated'' Nureyev after the country's justice system deemed him not guilty of treason. Yet Ms. Solway gives what is perhaps the fullest account of the events that led to his flight. She reports that Nureyev, on tour in Paris with the Kirov, had angered Soviet officials by eluding K.G.B. agents assigned to watch the dancers and going out alone with French friends at night. On June 3, the K.G.B. ordered the Soviet Embassy to send Nureyev back to Moscow. ''The K.G.B. was concerned only with state security,'' Ms. Solway said in a recent interview.

But the Kirov, on tour in Paris for the first time, had met with triumph, and Nureyev was being compared to Nijinsky. ''To the Soviet Embassy and the Kirov leadership, the chief mission of the tour was to demonstrate Soviet cultural supremacy,'' Ms. Solway said. ''They felt the K.G.B. were cultural philistines, and said they couldn't send him home.'' Continue reading the main story Officials in Paris resisted two separate orders from the K.G.B. Finally, as Nureyev and his fellow dancers were about to fly to London, a third K.G.B. directive left Kirov officials no choice but to comply. As Nureyev waited for his plane, according to Ms. Solway's account, the Kirov's artistic director, Konstantin Sergeyev, suddenly told him: ''You won't be coming with us now. Khrushchev wants you to go to Moscow and dance a special gala for him.'' Then Sergeyev told Nureyev that his mother was ill. Advertisement Continue reading the main story ''He absolutely panicked,'' said Ms.

Solway, ''because he realized he was not only being sent back, but would probably not be let out of the country again, and banished to a remote section.'' Nureyev threatened to kill himself. At a crucial moment, Ms. Solway's book relates, a high-ranking police officer at the Paris airport stepped in. The officer, Gregory Alexinsky, was a White Russian with no love for the Communists. His father, who had been a lawmaker in the Duma, had been imprisoned for criticizing Lenin. When Ms. Solway tracked down Mr. Alexinsky near Paris, he told her that he sequestered Nureyev and dispatched him secretly through a back door to French police headquarters. There, after being interrogated, he said, Nureyev was granted a refugee visa. In Communist Party archives, Ms. Solway discovered a damage report completed two days after the defection by Aleksandr Shelepin, the chief of the K.G.B., concluding that Nureyev should never have been sent abroad. Nureyev was tried in absentia for state treason and pronounced guilty. The defection was a serious propaganda blow to the Soviet authorities, and they clamped down on the travel of other artists.

Ms. Solway said she also uncovered documents, one signed by Leonid I. Brezhnev, that confirmed that the Soviet Union tried to quash Nureyev's career in the West. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy As Ms. Solway portrays him, Nureyev was the embodiment of opposites, an artist driven by the highest ideals, but a misogynist and an anti-Semite. ''You got a sense of danger and violence when Nureyev danced,'' Ms. Solway said. ''Many of the male dancers at the time were effete. They were deferential to ballerinas.'' He became a friend of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Britain's Princess Margaret, and the partner of Margot Fonteyn. As the head of the Paris Opera Ballet, he transformed it into one of the world's finest dance companies. Ms. Solway provides new details of Nureyev's childhood in Ufa, a city closed to foreigners near the Ural Mountains, about 800 miles east of Moscow. Ms.

Solway obtained the military record of Nureyev's father, Hamet, a political instructor in the Red Army. She said that even Nureyev was unaware of parts of his family's past. She interviewed Nureyev's first love, Menia Martinez, a Cuban exchange student, and Sonia Arova, who had been the fiancee of the dancer Erik Bruhn. Nureyev and the couple lived together briefly, and Bruhn eventually became the great love of Nureyev's life. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Both men and women sought out Nureyev, Ms. Solway writes. From his personal secretary in London, Joan Thring, Ms. Solway learned that after an evening with Marlene Dietrich, Nureyev feared that the movie star had romantic designs on him, and that he slighted her by not reciprocating. In another incident, when Nureyev met Arnold Schwarzenegger, the dancer asked the actor and body builder, ''How do you taste?'' Schwarznegger held out his arm, and Nureyev bit him. Toward the end of his life, he longed to have a family.

The dancer Charles Jude, a star of the Paris Opera Ballet and a protege of Nureyev's, told Ms. Solway, she said, that Nureyev wanted to buy a house where Jude and his family could live with him. He proposed to Jude that they combine their sperm and have Jude's wife, Florence, carry ''their'' child. Nureyev could never bring himself to retire. He sang and danced in a touring production of ''The King and I,'' and later took up conducting. Weakened by AIDS but still proud, he danced at a benefit for Fonteyn, who was terminally ill with cancer. Ms. Solway recounts the details of his final meeting, in 1987 in Ufa, with his dying mother. Nureyev was given a special 48-hour visa by the Soviet Union to visit her. He was distraught because he was convinced she did not recognize him. He returned to Paris. A few years later, as he grew increasingly weak, Nureyev lay on his bed, his head turbaned, draped in exotic robes, a pair of headphones on his ears, preparing to conduct ''Coppelia.'' He died on Jan.

6, 1993, at 54. The KGB's long war against Rudolf Nureyev - Telegraph The KGB's long war against Rudolf Nureyev Off stage Nureyev was capricious and wilful John Bridcut 12:01AM BST 17 Sep 2007 In 1961, Russia's finest dancer slipped through his keepers' fingers to defect to the West. But, years later, the Soviet secret police had their revenge. By John Bridcut The KGB had seen it coming. When Rudolf Nureyev, the most promising young talent in Leningrad's Kirov Ballet, fled the Soviet Union for the West in June 1961, they were not surprised. He was known for flouting house rules, and flirting with Western artists and ideas whenever he could. On the Kirov's tour of Paris in June 1961, he continually escaped his escorts to absorb French culture and friendship. It was why the KGB had tried to restrict his foreign touring, and had even asked his own mother whether he was likely to defect.

At Le Bourget airport outside Paris, the KGB had it all planned. As the rest of the Kirov tour party boarded the plane to London, there was a tap on Nureyev's shoulder at the departure gate, and an urgent summons to Moscow to perform for General Secretary Khrushchev. The burly men in the inevitable raincoats bungled it. Thanks to Nureyev's hysterical reaction and quick thinking by his French friends, he slipped through their fingers, and made his so-called "leap to freedom". But the KGB played a long game. The defection was particularly embarrassing for Moscow because it came only three months after Yuri Gagarin's pioneering journey into space. Nureyev, once hailed as "the cosmonaut of the stage", dashed both pride and propaganda. The West was quick to claim a political victory. But in truth his choice was practical rather than ideological. Nureyev had no interest in politics. He was a natural rebel against authority, whatever its political stripe. In Russia, he saw little chance of spreading his wings. So, with one or two discreet friends, he had been toying with defection, but he had made no plans.

He just knew what he had to do when the moment came. Paris was entranced by Nureyev's dancing, but off stage he irritated his French hosts just as much as his Russian minders. Capricious and wilful, he behaved like a spoilt child. The dancer Pierre Lacotte was amazed at the latitude the Kirov had afforded him over costumes and wigs: he told Nureyev that, in Paris or London, a company dancer had to wear what he was told. The sad truth that June was that most of his colleagues at the Kirov were glad to lose him. For the management he was simply trouble, while his fellow dancers relished filling the vacuum. The KGB, however, wanted him back. His celebrated teacher, Alexander Pushkin, and his devoted student friend, Tamara Zakrzhevskaya, were ordered to write pleading letters; his father, a loyal communist, was pressed to fetch him; and Soviet sympathisers in Paris tried to destroy his confidence by pelting him with missiles and catcalls on stage. When these efforts failed, the KGB made other plans, one of which was to break his legs.

He was tried in his absence and sentenced to seven years in prison as a traitor. Next, the KGB turned to his friends. Pushkin was repeatedly questioned, and suffered a heart attack. The careers of Leonid Romankov and his twin sister Liuba, scientists whose interest in literature and art had stimulated Nureyev, were blighted because of their friendship with him. Tamara Zakrzhevskaya was expelled from university, and forbidden to travel even to Eastern Europe for 30 years, for the crime of knowing him. "In this life," she says today, "you have to pay for everything. I had this friendship with Rudik [Nureyev]: it has stayed with me for my entire life. I don't regret anything." His friends in Leningrad kept the Nureyev flame alight in secret. In a communal apartment in Gatchinskaya Street is a remarkable – and completely unknown – private archive, assembled by a bereft fan after his defection.

Faina Rokhind is 80: she first saw Nureyev dance at his graduation in 1958, and became one of those who showered him with flowers in Leningrad before anyone in the West had even heard of him. While researching this Saturday's BBC documentary on Nureyev, I found myself in her room (no more than four metres by three) which is almost a shrine. The walls are adorned with images of Nureyev in his prime, and the cupboards and shelves overflow with books, photograph albums, magazines, scrapbooks and videos – one woman's unique collection in defiance of Soviet authority. In the rest of the Soviet Union, Nureyev became a non-person just as his international career was taking off. Russian books about ballet were recalled and every reference to Nureyev was literally cut out: he was excised from Soviet consciousness as though he had never been. But through her job in a Leningrad library, Faina Rokhind had access to foreign magazines. In her mid-thirties she took up English so that she could decipher British and American articles, which she faithfully copied out into exercise books.

By studying dance notices, she reconstructed every moment of Nureyev's career in an elaborate timeline. She managed to procure his autobiography in English, photographed page by page, and translated into Russian to circulate samizdat among her friends. In the weeks after his defection, Nureyev was lonely and depressed. He telephoned home: his father refused to speak to him, but his mother tugged at his heart-strings, with the KGB keenly listening in. He called East Berlin to speak to the handsome German student, Teja Kremke, with whom he had had an affair in Leningrad. This time the Stasi were listening. Nureyev pressed Kremke to join him in Paris and ease his loneliness. Kremke's mother insisted he complete his studies first, while his sister urged him to fly the nest. Kremke hesitated, and the Berlin Wall went up without warning. He was trapped. Teja and Rudolf, who had become "blood brothers", never met again.

In a letter, Kremke advised his "sweet Rudik" to stay in the West, but it was intercepted and the Stasi (in the manner of the recent film The Lives of Others) spied on Kremke relentlessly through two marriages and a drink problem, until his death in unexplained circumstances at the age of 37. For some years, Nureyev spoke to him occasionally on the phone. He also met Kremke's Indonesian wife, Nuraini, who could travel to the West. After Teja's death, Nureyev signed a photograph for her – a magnificent self-portrait of Teja. The KGB were waiting for the endgame. All through his glory days, Nureyev was pained by the separation from his beloved mother. In 1987 she was dying, and Mikhail Gorbachev finally granted him free passage to visit her. But it was already too late for recognition, let alone meaningful communication, and his anguish was compounded by a general cold shoulder in his home town of Ufa. He was turned away at his old school, and berated in the art gallery. At the theatre, his old colleagues had mysteriously been given the day off.

Some had been told not to answer the phone, while others had been sent out of town on spurious excursions. Two years later, he fulfilled a dream to return to the Kirov stage. But again it was too late. He was now 51, and hoped to perform a matching character part. But the Kirov authorities insisted on a youthful classical role – Albrecht in Giselle, which had launched his partnership with Margot Fonteyn more than 25 years before, or James in La Sylphide. They must have known these were beyond him. The conductor, Robert Luther, remembers him asking where "the bitches" were who had denounced him after his defection, and then greeting a former ballerina effusively while muttering "here comes number one" under his breath. But Nureyev was weak from Aids, and the dress rehearsal was a physical torment, as his old rival, Boris Bregvadze, observed: "On stage he was really bad. I left after the first act, because I didn't want to carry on watching a frail and ill Rudi struggle." It was his second cruel homecoming.

Both Nureyev and the KGB were in their twilight years. But the KGB had perhaps had the satisfaction of revenge. When the curtain rose to reveal Nureyev asleep on a couch, the Kirov audience erupted in applause so long that the conductor had to stop the orchestra and start again. But when he tried to dance, the legend began to crumble. The modern audience wondered what all the fuss was about. His one-time partner, the French dancer Ghislaine Thesmar, says it was important for him to "close the circle. He went on stage to dance like some people go to the temple and pray when they can't walk any more. That effort is sacred." For Faina Rokhind in Gatchinskaya Street, it was a reward for her years of devotion. "It was like a fairy tale, a miracle. I couldn't believe my eyes that I was once again seeing Rudolf on stage. It was a sign of the changing times.

I was euphoric." John Bridcut wrote and produced Nureyev: From Russia With Love, to be broadcast on BBC2 on Sept 22 The KGB’s long war against Rudolf Nureyev | Nureyev The KGB’s long war against Rudolf Nureyev 12 July 2010 by Nureyev By John Bridcut Telegraph.co.uk Published: 17 Sep 2007 In 1961, Russia’s finest dancer slipped through his keepers’ fingers to defect to the West. But, years later, the Soviet secret police had their revenge. The KGB had seen it coming. When Rudolf Nureyev, the most promising young talent in Leningrad’s Kirov Ballet, fled the Soviet Union for the West in June 1961, they were not surprised. He was known for flouting house rules, and flirting with Western artists and ideas whenever he could. On the Kirov’s tour of Paris in June 1961, he continually escaped his escorts to absorb French culture and friendship.

Off stage Nureyev was capricious and wilful It was why the KGB had tried to restrict his foreign touring, and had even asked his own mother whether he was likely to defect. At Le Bourget airport outside Paris, the KGB had it all planned. As the rest of the Kirov tour party boarded the plane to London, there was a tap on Nureyev’s shoulder at the departure gate, and an urgent summons to Moscow to perform for General Secretary Khrushchev. The burly men in the inevitable raincoats bungled it. Thanks to Nureyev’s hysterical reaction and quick thinking by his French friends, he slipped through their fingers, and made his so-called “leap to freedom”. But the KGB played a long game. The defection was particularly embarrassing for Moscow because it came only three months after Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering journey into space. Nureyev, once hailed as “the cosmonaut of the stage”, dashed both pride and propaganda. The West was quick to claim a political victory. But in truth his choice was practical rather than ideological. Nureyev had no interest in politics.

He was a natural rebel against authority, whatever its political stripe. In Russia, he saw little chance of spreading his wings. So, with one or two discreet friends, he had been toying with defection, but he had made no plans. He just knew what he had to do when the moment came. Paris was entranced by Nureyev’s dancing, but off stage he irritated his French hosts just as much as his Russian minders. Capricious and wilful, he behaved like a spoilt child. The dancer Pierre Lacotte was amazed at the latitude the Kirov had afforded him over costumes and wigs: he told Nureyev that, in Paris or London, a company dancer had to wear what he was told. The sad truth that June was that most of his colleagues at the Kirov were glad to lose him. For the management he was simply trouble, while his fellow dancers relished filling the vacuum. The KGB, however, wanted him back.

His celebrated teacher, Alexander Pushkin, and his devoted student friend, Tamara Zakrzhevskaya, were ordered to write pleading letters; his father, a loyal communist, was pressed to fetch him; and Soviet sympathisers in Paris tried to destroy his confidence by pelting him with missiles and catcalls on stage. When these efforts failed, the KGB made other plans, one of which was to break his legs. He was tried in his absence and sentenced to seven years in prison as a traitor. Next, the KGB turned to his friends. Pushkin was repeatedly questioned, and suffered a heart attack. The careers of Leonid Romankov and his twin sister Liuba, scientists whose interest in literature and art had stimulated Nureyev, were blighted because of their friendship with him. Tamara Zakrzhevskaya was expelled from university, and forbidden to travel even to Eastern Europe for 30 years, for the crime of knowing him. “In this life,” she says today, “you have to pay for everything. I had this friendship with Rudik [Nureyev]: it has stayed with me for my entire life.

I don’t regret anything.” His friends in Leningrad kept the Nureyev flame alight in secret. In a communal apartment in Gatchinskaya Street is a remarkable – and completely unknown – private archive, assembled by a bereft fan after his defection. Faina Rokhind is 80: she first saw Nureyev dance at his graduation in 1958, and became one of those who showered him with flowers in Leningrad before anyone in the West had even heard of him. While researching this Saturday’s BBC documentary on Nureyev, I found myself in her room (no more than four metres by three) which is almost a shrine. The walls are adorned with images of Nureyev in his prime, and the cupboards and shelves overflow with books, photograph albums, magazines, scrapbooks and videos – one woman’s unique collection in defiance of Soviet authority. In the rest of the Soviet Union, Nureyev became a non-person just as his international career was taking off. Russian books about ballet were recalled and every reference to Nureyev was literally cut out: he was excised from Soviet consciousness as though he had never been.

But through her job in a Leningrad library, Faina Rokhind had access to foreign magazines. In her mid-thirties she took up English so that she could decipher British and American articles, which she faithfully copied out into exercise books. By studying dance notices, she reconstructed every moment of Nureyev’s career in an elaborate timeline. She managed to procure his autobiography in English, photographed page by page, and translated into Russian to circulate samizdat among her friends. In the weeks after his defection, Nureyev was lonely and depressed. He telephoned home: his father refused to speak to him, but his mother tugged at his heart-strings, with the KGB keenly listening in. He called East Berlin to speak to the handsome German student, Teja Kremke, with whom he had had an affair in Leningrad. This time the Stasi were listening. Nureyev pressed Kremke to join him in Paris and ease his loneliness. Kremke’s mother insisted he complete his studies first, while his sister urged him to fly the nest. Kremke hesitated, and the Berlin Wall went up without warning. He was trapped.

Teja and Rudolf, who had become “blood brothers”, never met again. In a letter, Kremke advised his “sweet Rudik” to stay in the West, but it was intercepted and the Stasi (in the manner of the recent film The Lives of Others) spied on Kremke relentlessly through two marriages and a drink problem, until his death in unexplained circumstances at the age of 37. For some years, Nureyev spoke to him occasionally on the phone. He also met Kremke’s Indonesian wife, Nuraini, who could travel to the West. After Teja’s death, Nureyev signed a photograph for her – a magnificent self-portrait of Teja. The KGB were waiting for the endgame. All through his glory days, Nureyev was pained by the separation from his beloved mother. In 1987 she was dying, and Mikhail Gorbachev finally granted him free passage to visit her. But it was already too late for recognition, let alone meaningful communication, and his anguish was compounded by a general cold shoulder in his home town of Ufa. He was turned away at his old school, and berated in the art gallery.

At the theatre, his old colleagues had mysteriously been given the day off. Some had been told not to answer the phone, while others had been sent out of town on spurious excursions. Two years later, he fulfilled a dream to return to the Kirov stage. But again it was too late. He was now 51, and hoped to perform a matching character part. But the Kirov authorities insisted on a youthful classical role – Albrecht in Giselle, which had launched his partnership with Margot Fonteyn more than 25 years before, or James in La Sylphide. They must have known these were beyond him. The conductor, Robert Luther, remembers him asking where “the bitches” were who had denounced him after his defection, and then greeting a former ballerina effusively while muttering “here comes number one” under his breath. But Nureyev was weak from Aids, and the dress rehearsal was a physical torment, as his old rival, Boris Bregvadze, observed: “On stage he was really bad.

I left after the first act, because I didn’t want to carry on watching a frail and ill Rudi struggle.” It was his second cruel homecoming. Both Nureyev and the KGB were in their twilight years. But the KGB had perhaps had the satisfaction of revenge. When the curtain rose to reveal Nureyev asleep on a couch, the Kirov audience erupted in applause so long that the conductor had to stop the orchestra and start again. But when he tried to dance, the legend began to crumble. The modern audience wondered what all the fuss was about. His one-time partner, the French dancer Ghislaine Thesmar, says it was important for him to “close the circle. He went on stage to dance like some people go to the temple and pray when they can’t walk any more. That effort is sacred.” For Faina Rokhind in Gatchinskaya Street, it was a reward for her years of devotion. “It was like a fairy tale, a miracle. I couldn’t believe my eyes that I was once again seeing Rudolf on stage. It was a sign of the changing times.

I was euphoric.” • John Bridcut wrote and produced Nureyev: ‘From Russia With Love,’ a BBC production Rudolf Nureyev - Biography - IMDb Rudolf Nureyev Jump to: Overview (5) | Mini Bio (1) | Trivia (4) | Personal Quotes (4) Overview (5) 5' 8" (1.73 m) Mini Bio (1) He was an ethnic Tatar. He was educated at the Leningrad Ballet School and starred with Kirov Ballet. His first film was a USSR short Le Corsaire (1958). While performing in Paris in 1961 he defected to the West. He then performed internationally, becoming an Austrian citizen in 1982. The English/French documentary I Am a Dancer (1972), directed by Pierre Jourdan featured him and his long-time partner Margot Fonteyn . He played Rudolph Valentino in the film Valentino (1977) and Daniel Jelline in Exposed (1983), his last film. In 1982, he starred in the US stage revival of "The King and I".

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu> Trivia (4) Was actually a closeted homosexual at a time when it was considered immoral and even illegal. His repression of his true nature forced him to keep his relationships shrouded in secrecy and made him a very hostile and angry man. He remained closeted all the way to his death. Was not even thirty when he was being touted as "the greatest living male dancer." He kept every single pair of ballet slippers he had ever owned. It was rumored that it was because he was superstitious, when in fact, it was merely sentimental value. Initially, the producers of The Muppet Show (1976) had such difficulty casting guest stars that they had to call upon all their personal friends in the entertainment industry for help. This changed dramatically after Nureyev's guest appearance. The publicity of a renowned ballet dancer appearing on such a bizarre show created such positive publicity that the show became popular and soon celebrities were lining up to appear on the show. Personal Quotes (4) The only critic is a full house. [on why he didn't want children:] "What if they were not as good as me?

What would I do with those imbeciles?" I don't care if Margot is a Dame of the British Empire or older than myself. For me she represents eternal youth; there is an absolute musical quality in her beautiful body and phrasing. Because we are sincere and gifted, an intense abstract love is born between us every time we dance together. I approach dancing from a different angle than those who begin dancing at 8 or 9. Those who have studied from the beginning never question anything. For me, purity of movement wasn't enough. I needed expression, more intensity, more mind. See also Rudolf Nureyev - IMDb IMDb Miscellaneous Crew | Actor | Writer He was an ethnic Tatar. He was educated at the Leningrad Ballet School and starred with Kirov Ballet. His first film was a USSR short Le Corsaire (1958). While performing in Paris in 1961 he defected to the West. He then performed internationally, becoming an Austrian citizen in 1982. The English/French documentary I Am a Dancer (1972), directed by...

See full bio » Born: Nureyev: The Life by julie kavanagh (pantheon books) Book Review NUREYEV: EVERYTHING HE EVER SAID OR DID By Patricia Boccadoro PARIS, 26 NOVEMBER 2007 "Rudolf Nureyev had it all: beauty, genius, charm, passion, and sex appeal" reads the inside jacket cover of Nureyev: The Life , by Julie Kavanagh (Pantheon) the latest book about the world's most famous dancer who brought the best of Russian ballet to the West. In her weighty, "definitive" biography, everything he ever said or did has been meticulously recorded within its almost 800 pages, including a list of lovers to make Don Giovanni pale into insignificance. Kavanagh begins by telling the well-known tale of the poverty-stricken boy from the Russian provinces who sees his first ballet at the age of seven, eventually joins the Kirov school and company, thrills the West with his dancing and subsequently defects making headlines throughout the world.

She writes of his partnership with Margot Fonteyn, the legendary ballerina almost twenty years his senior, and dissects Nureyev's "private" life from his first "secret" affair with an East German student to his love for the great Danish dancer, Erik Bruhn, which lasted a lifetime. Bruhn's intensely personal and moving letters meant for Nureyev alone, which should by rights have been destroyed with the death of both dancers according to their pact, are there for all to see. Rudolf Nureyev was diagnosed HIV-positive in 1984; Kavanagh obtained all information relevant to the treatments he underwent and the medication he took over the next eight years from Michel Canesi, the young doctor described as being only too "excited" to be consulted by one of the greatest artistic figures of this century. The dancer's fight against AIDS in his later years, including the time he performed with a catheter under his costume, is set against the incongruous background of the glittering Palais Garnier and often makes painful and upsetting reading. The first few chapters are beautifully written.

Based on Nureyev's own 1962 biography, Nureyev, His Spectacular Early Years edited by Alexander Bland, Nureyev's own family including his sister, Razida Yevgrafova, his niece, Alfia Rafikova and his cousin, Amina Galiakbarova, gave Kavanagh a lot of new information about his childhood in Ufa during World War II . And while we have already been well-informed of how Nureyev lived in a dark cramped cabin in a room nine meters square with his mother and three sisters, Kavanagh throws light on the background of his parents, particularly of the enigmatic Hamet Nureyev. But the outstanding part of the biography lies in Julie Kavanagh's comprehensive study of the period in Leningrad between 1955 and 1961, from Rudolf's arrival at the Vaganova school "carrying all his belongings in a bag no bigger than a briefcase", to his defection.

Here, she has been guided by the magnificent book, Rudolf Nureyev, Three Years in the Kirov Theatre , the first publication to focus on Nureyev's Russian career, and which was compiled by his life-long friends, Liuba Myasnikova, Tamara Zakrzhevskaya and her son, Alexander Storozhuk, whom the biographer visited several times. The three of them, joined by Leonid Romankov, Liuba's twin brother, played key roles in piercing together these years and are key witnesses in the B.B.C.documentary, From Russia with Love. Tamara Zakrzhevskaya's memories of Rudolf saying how Shelkov repressed everything in him contribute in part to explaining why he moved to Pushkin's class, while Kavanagh's account of his relationship with Teja Kremke as well as her conversations with such people as Ninel Kurgapkina, Alla Osipenko, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Olga Moiseyeva throw invaluable light on his development as a dancer.

Already an immense star at the Kirov theatre, it becomes easier to understand Nureyev's intolerance of Soviet conventions in the late 1950's, including his rejection of the unsightly, out-dated costumes still worn there. As a dancer herself, Julie Kavanagh writes authoritatively of Nureyev's fascination for Balanchine , of the differences between the Vaganova and Bournonville technique, and also of how Rudolf had already begun to push the boundaries of male dance in Russia, changing the image of the heavy Russian macho-style men. He jumped like them, but gave a greater musicality and grace to each movement. It was the way he used his body, "poetically as an instrument of poetic exploration" as much as his "vulnerable quality", which so overwhelmed Violette Verdy . Nureyev elongated lines, arched his feet and gave grace to dancers who worked with him, in particular, those of the Paris Opéra Ballet who are passing on his legacy today. Always generous with his knowledge to both male and female dancers, standards rose wherever he went. Kavanagh also obtained access to the dancer's K.G.B.

file which she used in her account of the events leading to his defection as well as depositions made in preparation for his trial on April 2, 1962. Such information throws light on just how ugly and dangerous the situation was for him at the time. But unfortunately there are too many yachts, celebrities, plane journeys, bitchy remarks, and who wore what and where in the book. Of what interest to anybody is Jimmy Carter's mother? Although Kavanagh does write of Rudolf Nureyev's artistic dedication, when "he only lived when he danced", too much of the great Russian's legacy to the world has been buried in a morass of empty details. Maude Gosling, the woman Rudolf regarded as a second mother and loved dearly, told me as early as 1996 that she, as well as several other friends of Nureyev, had signed a "contract of exclusivity", and was bound to withhold all her memories of Nureyev to all writers excepting one chosen by the two Nureyev Foundations.

As the writer of an authorized biography who was granted complete editorial freedom, Kavanagh benefited not only from these souvenirs, but was also given unique access to the Foundation's archives, photographs and films. One can only assume that selection became too hard a process and she fell into the trap of cramming everything she learnt into her work. On a personal level, I had to struggle hard to find the sparkling young dancer I met in the sixties and whom I knew for over thirty years. His sense of fun and self-derision fails to come out. Moreover, he was always gentle, kind and ultra sensitive to any unorthodox situation I found myself in, qualities not sensational enough for the sale of books. In such a detailed biography entailing ten years research, it is also astonishing why the section on the Paris Opéra Ballet is incomplete and why equal importance was given to "one-off" works as to the current repertoire of productions Nureyev left which brings joy to thousands of spectators.

And whatever happened to the voices of Elisabeth Maurin , Isabelle Guèrin, Laurent Hilaire , Manuel Legris, or his last young protégé, Agnès Letestu , the younger generation of dancers he nurtured, those who are responsible today for continuing his work? Neither is there a word from Brigitte Lefèvre , artistic director in Paris, on Nureyev's legacy in which his vision of the repertoire there was that of fifty-fifty, classical and contemporary, which it is today. Secret Muses, Julie Kavanagh's 1996 biography of Frederick Ashton is a magnificent book. It is the best biography of any dance figure I have read, but then, Ashton was a reasonably accessible figure. With Rudolf Nureyev, Kavanagh is dealing with a much more difficult subject. Nureyev was complex and complicated, and a different person to everyone who thought they knew him and Kavanagh loses the dramatic thread of his life in a mass of extravagant details which only leave her reader confused. One can also regret that greater emphasis is given to his excesses as a man rather than to his genius as an artist.

Nureyev: The Life (Hardcover)

Question: In which year did Rudolf Nureyev defect to the West?
Answer: 1961